


The World will be Made Whole

by Hedgi



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Character Death, Comfort, F/M, Spectulation, all aboard the pain train, it's very complicated but I have a theory, reaction fic, sorta - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-19
Updated: 2017-05-19
Packaged: 2018-11-02 10:14:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10942401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hedgi/pseuds/Hedgi
Summary: Savitar is defeated, but with Iris dead, it doesn't feel much like a victory. Barry falls to his knees, broken and hollow, and mourns.All is not as lost as it appears.





	The World will be Made Whole

**Author's Note:**

> title from "Housekeeping" by Marilynne Robinson

This should feel like a victory. It doesn’t. Savitar is gone, nothing more than ash, fragmented shards of metal, ice that slowly seeps into the carpet. He never could defeat him alone, and yet, even with Caitlin and Cisco still so close he can sense them hovering behind him, he feels alone. No, not alone. This is something worse than being alone in the dark, standing in the too quiet eye of destruction that was once a living room. He feels hollow and empty. It’s over, and Savitar lost, but that does not mean that they won.

Barry’s legs give out from under him. It is not the first time. He knows it will not be the last. When his mother died, when his father died, when the black hole nearly swallowed the city and his actions—inactions—cost too many their lives, when he changed time and saw all the places where the coffee mug could not be made whole, the world felt like it had fallen out from under him, like he might fall forever until he reached it. Dimly, he had thought this might be like that. He should have realized that losing her is not like falling until he hits the ground. There simply isn’t a ground to hit. There isn’t anything left to fall.

He doesn’t cry. He doesn’t have the energy, the strength, anything left inside. Savitar is gone. His deepest fear, his most terrible enemy, defeated years sooner than time foretold. Caitlin is back, silver haired but amber eyed. Cisco’s gloves cover hands, not metal and wire. Wally isn’t a shattered doll, a puppet with cut strings. They did it. They changed the future. Just not enough. Just not the one thing that mattered most. Only one life, instead of dozens. That should be a victory. One life, two. Hers and his own. What does anything matter?

He knows he has to keep his promise. He can’t. Not right now. He has nothing but time for promises. But what hope is there of healing, from this? Maybe Thawne was right from the first. Maybe Thawne saw all of this coming. That he could never be happy for long, that when some people break, they can’t be put back together. Maybe he was wrong to hope to defy it. Somehow, it hurts even more.

It’s over now. The past’s set like cement and he can’t run fast enough to make it change. He can’t run at all, on his hands and knees in the living room, surrounded by memory and wreckage. He can’t bear to watch her die again, running pointlessly. He knows the cost of paradox; even still he would risk it, again, again, again, if only it could guarantee her life. But it wouldn’t. He knows that, now, and if there was anything inside him left, it would shatter. There isn’t anything. To be alone in the dark means you have to _be_.

He can still feel the quiet existence of people around him, moving, keeping a radius. The soft crush of carpet, a jagged scrape as metal slides past metal. He breathes in the ash, the smell of burning circuits and skin. No other sounds make it to his ears. Good. He doesn’t want the empty congratulations of a victory that isn’t his. He kneels there, hollow. Time doesn’t seem to pass, and he wishes it would sweep on without him. It won’t. He knows it won’t and he hates it for that lack of mercy. His powers haunt him, trapping him, forcing him into a stillness between seconds, and the thought that this is how he will live the rest of his life—cold and shattered and so much worse than alone—pulses through his skin, the only feeling besides the physical ache the emptiness brings.

The silence shifts. He is not sure how he can tell that this one is different, but it is, unnatural and real, not just his mind refusing to react.

Someone touches his shoulder. Any other touch might have him flinching away, refusing the useless comfort. But he knows this hand, has memorized the feel of it, the weight of it and the places where it curves. It breaks him. Why can’t the Speedforce just stop? Hasn’t he learned his lesson? Hasn’t he suffered enough without this? How can it possibly think that her hand, that her body, is the one it can puppet, now. Any other would hurt less.

He does not cry, he weeps, fingers catching at the scorched floor, unable to do anything else. _Iris, Iris, Iris._ He can’t breathe for sobbing, as if his lungs do not want to stay.

“I’m sorry,” her voice says. “Bar, I’m sorry.” And that screams in his mind. No imposter, no entity, those words belong only to Iris. He saw her fall. He saw her fall, like his father fell, light dying in her eyes. He can’t look up, afraid of what he’ll see, or won’t.

Instead, she moves, hand sliding down his shoulder until it’s holding his, until she’s crouched in the ash before him.

“I couldn’t tell you,” she says, and he catches sight of her face, her eyes gleaming with life and tears. “If you knew, he’d have known he lost. Barry, I’m so sorry. I’m here. I’m here now. It’s me.”

It is. He knows it is, with a certainty that lies at his very center, radiating outward. Iris. _His_ Iris. After so many almosts and not quites and shattered hopes, finally an answered prayer. Somehow, she’s here, alive in the aftermath. His tears don’t stop, and hers start, as his heart tells him to accept what his mind can hardly comprehend.

He’s not sure if she kisses him or if he kisses her, when it starts or when it stops or if it stops at all. All he knows is that he’s holding her and never wants to let go.

“How?” he finally asks, voice shaking with wonder and the shedding of grief. “Iris, you’re--I saw—I watched you die—“

She takes his hand in hers, pressing it to the spot where there should have been a hole, not looking away from his face.

“Still beating,” she says, and the darkness lifts.

**Author's Note:**

> comments are love, please love me


End file.
